Navy bomber intact but under sediment in lake

San Diego 
The Navy bomber that sank into Lower Otay Reservoir in 1945 remains in one piece but is buried in a lot of sediment at the bottom of the lake, said divers who examined the plane Thursday.

The sediment – and funding needs – could complicate efforts to salvage the World War II era SB2C-4 Helldiver and restore it for display at the National Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola, Fla.

“It's precarious, and we won't know the structural condition of the plane until we do a detailed analysis and see if the plane can be recovered in one piece,” said diver engineer Keith Pearson of A&T Recovery, the Chicago-based company hired to inspect the aircraft and potentially bring it up.

Pearson spoke after spending an hour at the Helldiver site Thursday morning.

He said visiblity is very low on the reservoir floor, at 85 feet, and that it turns to zero with “one fin kick.”

“I took video around the airplane, and it's buried up to the cockpit, and the cockpit is full” of sediment, Pearson said. “Half way down the plane, you can see the wing tips.”

His dive was followed by one from a Navy team whose members explored the area as part of a training exercise. Early in the afternoon, another A&T Recovery diver will descend to snap photos and record video footage of the aircraft.

All of the divers are being accompanied by ranger-divers working for San Diego's lakes system.

They are roughly 200 yards southeast of the boat dock and about 300 yards from shore.

Thursday's project stemmed from an incident in February, when an angler looking for bass with his fish finder instead came upon the outline of a plane. He alerted city lakes officials, who confirmed the discovery and eventually got the Navy involved.

Based on preliminary photos and video, the Navy traced the Helldiver's history to May 28, 1945. The bomber's engine failed during a practice mission and pilot E.D. Frazar made a wheels-up, flaps-down forced landing. He and gunner Joseph M. Metz swam to shore.

Frazar died of a heart attack in 1979, while it's unclear whether Metz is still alive.

Amid the many plane crashes in World War II, Navy officials decided to leave the aircraft in the lake. Now they would like to recover it because the naval aviation museum recently had to transfer its only Helldiver to another museum.

It will take about a month to decide whether to raise the plane from Lower Otay but possibly years to actually salvage it because of funding and permitting challenges, said A&T Recovery co-owner Taras Lyssenko.

“The money is a really big issue,” he said. “It's not on the federal budget to do these kinds of projects.” Some wealthy corporate executives have funded similar recovery efforts in the past, and the naval aviation museum's foundation would pitch in as well.

It could cost up to half a million dollars to recover and restore the Helldiver.

Aside from fund-raising, permits must be secured from historical, environmental and other regulatory agencies. Lyssenko said the California Office of Historic Preservation will make the first call on whether to approve the salvage.